Gov. Kathy Hochul defended her controversial initiative to flood the city’s public transit system with National Guardsmen , saying it’s going as planned — even as terrified straphangers vowed to avoid the rails after this week’s shooting on a packed A-train.
“My objective was to make sure [the National Guard is] in our main transit hubs – you see them at Grand Central [Station] and other places, so they can free up [NYPD cops],” Hochul told reporters at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Midtown Saturday. “So the plan is working as we had expected.”
Under Hochul’s order, 750 National Guardsmen and 250 state and MTA cops were sent to patrol subway stations, a decision she staunchly defended as a crime deterrent that would calm commuters’ “anxiety.”
